This has been something I've been wanting to do for a while. Here goes nothing.
50. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
A Roland Emmerich film, it should come as no surprise that this movie sucks. My biggest complaint here is that it is absolutely ridiculous. Global warming causes an ice age. No, really, that's the plot! Even if I could accept that, it gets pretty ridiculous when Jake Gyllenhaal starts outrunning cold weather that would kill him if it caught up to him. Yeah... There were some talented people involved in this, notably Gyllenhaal and excellent British actor Ian Holm, in a regrettably brief role. And the film stars Dennis Quaid. Expect to see him further up on the list by the way. At least this film is visually satisfying. Emmerich has a fetish for large-scale destruction and special effects and the scene with New York being completely flooded actually looks very good, I'll admit. But I feel like this movie had large-scale destruction merely for having action scenes. For instance, there's a scene in Los Angeles in which there are multiple huge tornadoes. These tornadoes have nothing to do with the movie and are never explained as to what they have to do with either global warming or an ice age. I'm confused.
I've of course heard that this isn't Roland Emmerich's film, but it was the one for me that kept me from watching his more recent movies. That having been said, Anonymous is getting really good reviews so far, so I'll have to see that.
49. Scary Movie 4 (2006)
The new-wave of spoof movies that started with Scary Movie is the worst thing to ever happen to film. While not the worst of these, Scary Movie 4 was certainly quite awful. Despite being made by talented people, this film is under the impression that re-enacting a scene from a recent movie will have the audience laughing. That's all this movie is is re-enacting scenes and throwing in gags and visual puns whenever it's convenient. I remember seeing this in the theater and I felt like it went on forever, because it just got so boring. If a joke didn't work, it just kept going, notably the Million Dollar Baby spoof, which really didn't need to be in the movie, and certainly not for as long as it was. And of course, there's that stupid, immature, gross-out, bathroom humor that defines the Scary Movie franchise.
48. The Terror (1963)
Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff, and Francis Ford Coppola. How can you go wrong? This is a good example.
The Terror was made without a script and in a matter of weeks or maybe even days and it shows. Roger Corman is the master of B-movies and he made this after finishing filming on another film early, so he decided to make use of the sets that he had left over so as to not let them go to waste. And that's all that's interesting in this movie: the sets. Everything else sucks.
I still can't really tell you what the plot is. There's something to do with like a dead wife and there's a French soldier (Nicholson) wandering around for whatever reason. I don't really know. Boris Karloff has no presence in this film, and Jack Nicholson wasn't THE Jack Nicholson yet. What I love most of all though is how this was made. Corman would shoot scenes of Karloff walking around the set, and then he would work them into the "story" after filming them.
There really is no plot or anything that makes sense in this movie. It's just creepy atmosphere with mildly creepy dialogue that comes off as hilarious on occasions, with how bad it is said. One thing to look for though is a dude getting his eyes ripped out by a bird, which is like the only moment of action in the film and it's pretty cool.
Oh and apparently Francis Ford Coppola directed some of this movie, though it's credited only to Corman.
47. The Mummy Returns (2001)
I'd like to start this off by saying I'm a fan of the 1999 Mummy film. It's a good action movie. It has that old-time adventure feel to it, some great action, and it's a pretty good new-age way to tell the classic 1932 Mummy story. The sequel, however, is just plain stupid. Everything about it is contrived.
The story takes a stupid turn as for the most part, it ignores the Mummy and focuses on the Scorpion King, who apparently we're supposed to care about even though we don't.
The film starts almost right away with a dumb action sequence in London where they're driving around and shooting at these mummy things which act like monkeys for whatever reason. It sets the tone for a dumb movie. Not saying that the predecessor was intelligent, but I at least liked how that focused on the mythology of the mummy and the backstory and everything.
And directer Stephen Sommers goes overboard on the slow-motion in action scenes here, a trait which he carried to 2004's Van Helsing and 2009's GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It's very difficult to feel excitement from an action scene when it's done in painfully slow-motion.
This movie also has very little original to offer. The most memorable scene of the preceding movie was of course the sandstorm scene, so they had to re-do that. Except now it's not sand, but water. And they're not in a plane, but like a hot-air balloon or something. And again at the conclusion of the film, everything around them in this ancient city is destroyed. Except this time not in a way that makes sense or looks real, but in like this weird typhoon/earthquake thing ala Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That having been said, the dumbest moment of the movie actually comes during the one original part--when an army of Pygmies attacks them for some reason.
46. The Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
This is the most unfortunate movie in this list. I say that because the Blake Edwards/Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies are truly hilarious. So what went wrong here? Well........Peter Sellers died before production started.
So this movie really shouldn't have been made. I don't understand what Blake Edwards was thinking to go through with this film after Sellers died. Well anyways it was made and the result is basically a clip show. Now clip shows from sitcoms can be pretty funny because they do show the funniest things to happen throughout the show, but the absence of original material is truly annoying. That's what I felt here.
But another thing that's annoying about this movie is that they don't treat it like just a clip show. They say Clouseau has been killed and they go around interviewing people from the previous movies who knew him and see what their experiences were like. As great as it is to see Herbert Lom as well as some minor characters being interviewed, providing segues into flashbacks, you just really wish there was better use for them.
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